Renewal in the Church

In recent weeks a media whirlwind has broken out around Benedict XVI’s resignation. The press has hung on the Pope’s every word. Someone wrote on Twitter that never before had so many journalists read a Lenten message from the Holy Father. How wonderful! Too bad that the information they then passed on had nothing to do with what he had said. It has been sad to see how many media outlets have played along with false, sensationalist stories whose only aim is to harm the Church.

We have seen dozens of interviews with cardinals, bishops, priests, theology professors and so on, and in every one the question comes up: will there be renewal in the Church under the next Pope? I feel great joy every time I hear that word, renewal, because if there is one thing we have right now, it is a renewed Church, with Catholics whose faith is so renewed that they are not content just to go to Mass and pray, but are studying the teaching of their faith in order to know it, live it, and pass it on to their families and to society, just as the first Christians did.

I read an article in one of those anticlerical, sensationalist Spanish outlets that are always looking for any way to attack the Church. The journalist described the great annoyance some Spaniards, atheists or people indifferent to the faith, felt at the tireless apostolic work of several Catholic groups in that country. He criticized them for reviving abandoned cathedrals, for filling them with people, and because these “fanatics” were getting many young men to enter seminaries.

That is part of the wonderful renewal of the Church we are seeing in many countries around the world. Another sign of it was World Youth Day in Madrid in 2011, where hundreds of confessionals stood in Retiro Park and thousands of young people went to confession. Not to mention what was seen at Cuatro Vientos airfield, when hundreds of thousands of young people knelt in complete recollection before the Blessed Sacrament. No one was standing behind them telling them what to do. They did it of their own accord, because they love God, because they learned to love him in their homes, their schools and their parishes; because they have freely chosen the path Jesus Christ taught us and made very clear in the Church he himself founded. They do it because they know that in this upside-down world, living face to face with God is the only thing that can give them true happiness. Then we saw the World Meeting of Families in Milan in 2012, with thousands of happy large Catholic families (even though many were struggling to make ends meet) and with total, absolute clarity on matters such as marriage between a man and a woman for life, fidelity, virginity and so on.

Last January we saw a massive pro-life march in Washington, with thousands of young people defending the right to life from conception. Many of them had gone since childhood with their parents to abortion clinics to help desperate women who came to abort, and had persuaded many of them not to. Today pro-life Catholics are the abortion groups’ worst nightmare. I could go on writing dozens of pages about the wonderful renewal we are living in our Church. That leaven in the dough (which the media don’t show), contributed by many lay people, priests, bishops and others, is producing impressive growth in both numbers and quality. We are already seeing fruits, and we will see many more, very soon.

I just wanted to end with a story from my beloved Venezuelan Church. A few weeks ago I met a young priest whose faith and doctrinal formation impressed me enormously. When I asked whether he had studied in Rome, he told me he had studied at the seminary in El Hatillo. He is the twelfth child of a family from Catia; his mother died giving birth to him. He was finishing university and had a girlfriend when he felt God’s call, and he left everything to serve Him. Now he is happy! working in a very crowded and dangerous area of Caracas, doing evangelization work much like Don Bosco’s. And there are thousands of priests like him (I know quite a few) in every corner of our country. Sadly, last week one of them, José Mendoza, only 44, was killed in Barquisimeto.

So do you see how the Catholic Church is being renewed? Every day, even when the seas are rough and some want to shake the barque of Peter with attacks and lies, she will remain Firmer, more Alive, Younger and more Renewed than ever. Always, of course, following the Way Jesus Christ left us, which no Pope will change for ever and ever. Amen.